Broom House Farm News September

At the weekend the oats were harvested using the forage harvester, and tipped into the silage pit, the oats seem to be great quality. The crops grown down next to the A691 were a little thin but the oats along Long Edge Lane have yielded very well - as far as organic crops can yield well. Thanks to Walter Emmerson for stepping in to harvest these for us when our usual contractors were flat out busy with their wheat harvest. The oats will be used alongside grass and clover silage to help fatten the cattle through the winter months.

It's a little too late in the year to sow the grass/clover seed that will follow the oats, we could risk it, but early frosts or a very wet Autumn will mean that the time and money is wasted, so it's been decided to wait and sow these in the Spring....or has it? This warm weather is tempting.

All the ewes have been weaned and the Farm Team have been busy sorting these out into groups of fatter and thinner ewes, so that we can get them all into perfect condition for tupping in October/November. The lambs are grazing the red clover and have been weighed and sorted into batches according to size. Lambs are growing slowly here, we've sold fewer compared to this time last year, which goes to show that even sheep need a bit of sunshine. Most of our neighbours seem to be finding the same, so no doubt there'll be a glut of lambs shortly. The best ewe lambs have also been split off and will enter the breeding flock - these will be tupped in November. It's at this time of year that we need to decide how many ewe lambs to keep and how many ewes to lamb next year and in how many batches. Lots of head scratching and pencilled figures in the office.

Wool sacks being loaded earlier this month

There are some sweet piglets in the pig shed...how about this amazing story - yesterday a visitor told us that a sow has squashing one of her piglets. This happens now and then, as the sows are so large and clumsy. Mark stood the sow up and indeed found a piglet gasping it's last breath. Fearing the worst but feeling a very faint pulse he popped the piglet into the special box that we keep for poorly piglets and went back to rolling the silage pit, as we were foraging the oats. An hour later, Nathan, one of the Fury Events Team arrived at the silage pit holding the piglet. It had recovered, climbed out of it's box, wandered through the back yard and into the quad bike store where Nathan was working! The piglet is now back with it's mother...a Happy Ending!

PS: please get in touch if you would like any white doves, we have had a population explosion and have several to re-home!